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    Hell Is Empty
    Hell Is Empty
    Hell Is Empty
    Audiobook8 hours

    Hell Is Empty

    Written by Craig Johnson

    Narrated by George Guidall

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Spur Award winner Craig Johnson has garnered critical acclaim for his Walt Longmire mysteries. In this riveting seventh entry, Wyoming's Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire is pushed beyond his limits. When three hardened convicts escape FBI custody in a mountain blizzard, an armed psychopath leads them up Big Horn Mountain. As Longmire struggles to track their treacherous ascent, he'll need all the help he can get from the tribal spirits of the towering summit.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 1, 2011
    ISBN9781461803928
    Hell Is Empty
    Author

    Craig Johnson

    Craig Johnson es el director principal de ministerios de la Iglesia de Lakewood con Joel Osteen, que supervisa todos los ministerios pastorales y es el fundador de la Fundación Champions y los centros de desarrollo del Club de Campeones para necesidades especiales, con más de 75 centros en todo el mundo. Craig es el coautor de Champions Curriculum, un plan de estudios cristiano de alcance completo para aquellos con necesidades especiales. Es autor de Lead Vertically que inspira a la gente a ofrecerse como voluntario y a construir grandes equipos que perduren y Champion que habla sobre cómo el viaje milagroso de un niño a través del autismo está cambiando el mundo. Craig y su esposa Samantha, tienen tres hijos: Cory, Courtney y Connor.

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    Reviews for Hell Is Empty

    4/5

    367 ratings30 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A steady driving book w good descriptions of struggling up a mountain through snow and storms. A few places obvious, campy, and poorly described but the ending was tight and not dragged out. Thoughtful and not overly emotional which it could have been. It gave me pause and brought on thoughts of past adventures and ones ultimate demise. (Which is not unhealthy).
    • 5/5
      Some might consider the structural and plot elements lifted from Dante's Inferno to be a bit heavyhanded, and if I was more familiar with the 700 year old poem, I might agree; but my layman's association with the work found the parallel perfect.
    • 5/5
      One of the best books in the Sheriff Walt Longmire series. Exceptional story, so well written by Craig Johnson that it feels deeply personal. And, as always, simply outstanding narration by George Guidall. I’ll be reading or listening to this one again.
    • 1/5
      I finally had to give up at the halfway point on this book. I have read every Longmire book up to this point and have enjoyed every one. This book, from the beginning, I could not make heads or tails from it and finally gave up. I am not sure what it was all about and I hate spending half the time listening and then giving up as there are so many really good books that I could have been listening to.
    • 5/5
      Although many of the regular cast of characters do not play a large role in this episode, it is still one of my favorites in the series. It has a large mystic component and I thoroughly enjoyed Walt's sidekick, the enormous Indian, Virgil. True, Walt is an idiot for pursuing the killer by his lonesome, but the book has great humor, grit, adventure and mystery, all of it made even better, by listening to it on audio with George Guidall narrating--absolutely fantastic! I plan on "reading" all of them on audio from this point forward. BTW--I just watched this same episode on the TV version. It is Season 2, episode 1. The TV show is okay, but this episode was nothing like the book--most disappointing.
    • 5/5
      When a federal prisoner exchange goes horribly wrong, Wyoming's Sheriff Walt Longmire sets out on the trail of the escaped prisoners and their hostages. The escapees seem to be headed toward Cloud Peak in the Bighorn Mountains. So is a late winter storm. Backup is on the way, but will Walt succumb to the elements before help arrives?Survival stories typically don't appeal to me, so I was very surprised to enjoy this book so much. Despite the ever worsening conditions, Walt never lost his characteristic dry sense of humor. I also loved the parallels to Dante's Inferno. I can even see myself re-reading this after my next reading of the Inferno. Although there's nothing about the plot or the story that would be too obscure for readers who haven't read the earlier books in the series, I think it would be better to read the earlier books first. There are references to events from the earlier books in the series, and to The Cold Dish in particular. The book includes an appendix with each of the main characters' reading lists for a deputy who's trying to fill in the gaps in his education. I borrowed an ebook through the public library, but I'm considering buying a copy just to have access to the book lists!
    • 5/5
      The Longmire series is awesome! Can't wait for further adventures as I read through the series or continue to listen to it.
    • 4/5
      When a prisoner exchange goes sideways, Walt tracks the fugitives through a late spring mountain blizzard. The seventh installment of the Walt Longmire series is less a mystery than it is a man vs nature (vs man) story. It also sets up some things to come in the next few books (I hope).
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book. I loved the spiritual aspects and of course the setting is marvelous. However, at the end, Mr. Johnson extended some of the final scenes just a little too much for me. The descriptions were excellent, but it just went on too long.
    • 5/5
      A brutal criminal Chase story that descends (ascends) into a frozen hell. It includes a guide to the circles of hell. In many ways a hella journey for Longmire complete with the core self Discovery for him,It certainly stands out as unique from the prior novels. It is both a compelling story and a journey into another's mind.
    • 3/5
      Another in the Walt Longmire Beats the Elements and the Bad Guys, With a Lot of Help from the Spirit World series. This one made it really hard to believe a human could endure what Walt endures and live. But then, maybe he didn't---maybe he died and came back. A couple times. He's not even sure himself. Johnson, like Robert B. Parker, has a lot of respect for his readers' intelligence and familiarity with literature, in this case Dante's Inferno. He didn't so much make me want to read it, as make me wish I had read it. This is an adventure of mythic and allegorical proportions. Highly recommended if you like that sort of thing. And there's an eclectic, highly satisfying (to me, anyway) reading list at the end.June 2020
    • 3/5
      Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson is the 7th book in the Walt Longmire series. In this one, Sheriff Longmire is tracking an escaped psychopath through the Bighorn Mountains during a blizzard. The psychopath has recently confessed to the murder of a young Native American boy who turns out to be the grandson of Virgil White Buffalo, a friend and spiritual guide of Walt’s. Walt sets off alone on the killers trail, and soon is past the point of return as the weather deteriorates, a wildfire has been set and roars down the mountain toward him, and the killer lies in ambush.This is a series that I enjoy but this book was a little too spiritual for my taste. Walt is accompanied on his trip by a spirit guide and the whole story seems to be a deliberate spin on Dante’s Inferno, a book that Walt’s deputy was reading at the beginning of the story. I also missed the presence of the regular characters like Henry Standing Bear, and his feisty deputy Vic Moretti. Nevertheless, I am still a fan of the series and will definitely be reading on.
    • 3/5
      Longmire finds himself in survival mode as he pursues escaped convicts and their hostages through a blizzard in the Bighorn mountains. Much of the book seems to take place inside Sheriff Walt's head, who is apparently hallucinating. The connection to Dante"s Inferno made it more than just a survival story. This novel was heavy on psychology and short on mystery.
    • 2/5
      This book was painfully agonizing to read!
    • 5/5
      Johnson's sense of place is always fantastic. This story takes place in Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains and has you questioning a lot of things as you go. When I finished, I wanted to immediately start reading it again, along with Dante's Inferno. Walt is one of my favorite book characters.
    • 4/5
      The seventh entry in the Longmire series finds Sheriff Walt Longmire alone on top of a mountain in the teeth of a tremendous blizzard, tracking a gang of escaped prisoners and their hostages. This one delves heavily into the series' exploration of Native American mysticism, as Longmire may or may not be accompanied by an Indian guide as he fights the elements and the depraved psychopath mastermind of the escapees. I enjoy this series very much, although I would have preferred to read this particular book in the dog days of August. :-)
    • 4/5
      I saw a variation of this story on the excellent Longmire TV series (well, it has sort of jumped the shark recently), so I was prepared for having a basic idea of what was going to happen. Wrong. Very different. No problem, the books are always .very goodWalt takes off after a gang of escaped convicts in the middle of a snowstorm. There’s a marvelous scene up in the mountains where Virgil White Buffalo, the huge Indian and Vietnam veteran from a previous book, and Walt hunker down during a snowstorm and discuss the Aeneid and play chess using some pebbles and rocks. The question is, did it happen?I questioned the motivations of the bad guy and certainly the apparitions, but Johnson always delivers a good story.
    • 4/5
      While all of Craig Johnson's "Longmire" series of novels have basically the same cast of characters, headed by sheriff Walt Longmire, the cast plays different roles with differing emphasis on their involvement. This one was almost entirely centered on sheriff Longmire alone. There is a lot of inner conversation and interaction with an almost mystical character (dead Indian). A very interesting book
    • 3/5
      Hell Is Empty (2011) is Craig Johnson’s seventh “Walt Longmire Mystery” and the author returns here to an approach he hinted at in one or two previous novels in the series. Walt Longmire is flying solo in this one…as in completely alone in his search for the bad guys. The book’s other main characters (love interest Vic Moretti, best friend Bear, the old sheriff, and pretty much everyone except Sancho, the newest deputy) are not to be heard from until the book’s epilogue. Sancho is around in the first third of the book, and Vic has a few lines of telephone dialogue to her credit later on, but that is just about it.And that really doesn’t work well.This series, like all the good ones, is all about the characters readers have come to know and love and how those characters relate to each other. It is about little side-plots involving several of them, and about how these people evolve over time. There is none of that here. NoneWhat we have, instead, is a passable story of a dedicated Wyoming lawman who takes it upon himself to track down and kill one of the most dangerous criminals in the history of criminals. Under weather conditions that would kill a man half his age, Longmire endures numerous near-deaths to finally get his man. But, frankly, it’s all a bit blah when compared to most of the previous six books – this could have been any anonymous sheriff as far as the reader likely cares - and I hope that Johnson got back to normal with book eight. I’ll soon find out as I continue my quest to catch up on the entire series.
    • 3/5
      I am diving into Walt Longmire and Wyoming. In this novel, the emphasis is Dante's Inferno as Walt chases an escaped killer throughout the mountains. Walt encounters the huge Indian, Virgil. But is Virgil a dream or a reality? Virgil reveals a secret about Cady that no one knows. As Walt chases the villain alone, Walt's friends tramp on in the snow and horrendous weather to locate Walt. The story is suspenseful and draws many parallels from the Inferno. The Inferno is about descending and heat, whereas Walt is ascending in coldness. Again, a man of Walt's age could not survive all the injuries he encounters in every novel.
    • 5/5
      Walt and his deputy Saizarbitoria are in charge of transporting three deadly prisoners to the county line to meet up with the FBI, other county sheriff's departments and Ameri-Trans, who is contracted to move the prisoners to their new facility. Things to awry, of course, as a strong winter storm threatens the Bighorn Mountains and the escapees seem determined to head right up the side of the mountain. In addition to the Shakespeare quote that heralds the title and pages inside, a battered copy of Dante's Inferno makes quite an impact on the story line as Walt heads up the mountain in pursuit of the worst of the three, Raynaud Shade.Another great piece of writing by Johnson, each step of the way.
    • 5/5
      Sheriff Walt Longmire and his Basque deputy Saizarbitoria have escorted three very bad men to turn them over to another jurisdiction when things begin to go horribly wrong. The adventure that follows as Longmire tracks the worst of the bad guys is almost indescribable. Virgil White Buffalo, a larger-than-life character whom we've encountered before, is involved, and Longmire once again finds himself risking his life and possibly his sanity in the mountains. The only reason this book didn't keep me on the edge of my seat is that I listened to the audio version while walking my dog. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      While Craig Johnson is still a favorite of mine and this is a very good read this book is more about man vs nature as it is Walt vs the forces of evil. I prefer the stories with the full cast of characters.
    • 5/5
      Usually I wait a while after finishing a book before writing the review. But, since there are almost no words to describe this book I figured, what the heck.

      I've been a big Craig Johnson/Walt Longmire fan for several years now and have always considered his first, The Cold Dish, my favorite. Hell is Empty hasn't surpassed it but it is in a dead heat.

      Walt and Sancho are delivering some prisoners to the FBI when things go bad. Many FBI are killed and the most dangerous of the criminals are on the run, with hostages. Walt makes Sancho stay with an injured officer and takes off after the prisoners. There is a running story line about Dante's Inferno and even if you've never read the entire piece it fits right into the storyline.

      Other than the beginning and the end this book is about Walt, his beliefs, his determination, his amazing abilities to fight on under the most trying of circumstances. Virgil White Buffalo makes another appearance and is a wonderful traveling companion for Walt.

      I'll be thinking about this one for a long time, and will probably listen to it soon just to get the wonderful George Guidall's voice back into my head for Walt, Henry, Virgil and the rest of the cast.

      The only bad part? Having to wait another year for more new stories of Walt and the people of Absaroka County. Well, except for the new A&E series called Longmire -- can't wait to see that either.
    • 4/5
      A van load of escaped criminals in the dead of winter, and of course Sheriff Walt Longmire is johnny on the spot. Encounters with wildlife, flash fires, and could he be seeing dead people? On the hunt for a serial killer, Longmire's having visions of death, but he's just too stubborn to lay down and die.Brrr... this one had me reaching for an extra blanket at refilling my tea for warmth.
    • 3/5
      The landscape often plays an important role in these stories, especially here. This 7th Longmire book was suspenseful and thought-provoking, but I missed the camaraderie, conflict, and humor among the supporting characters, especially Vic Moretti and Henry Standing Bear. Just my personal preference to follow along with the whole ensemble, but the entire series is excellent and I wouldn't miss a single volume. I wouldn't, however, recommend this as a starting point for anyone just sampling the series!
    • 4/5
      Hell is Empty is the seventh book in the Walt Longmire series and the second that I've read. I'll be going back for the rest throughout this winter - these are just that good.With a title that quotes Shakespeare and an obsession with Dante, in general, and The Inferno, in particular, this book is less of a mystery and more of a thriller, less of a Western cop procedural and more of a classic hero's journey. I think all great heroes need one of these and Walt Longmire is definitely a great hero.With a psychopathic prison escapee and his cohorts loose with hostages in the Big Horn Mountains in an ice storm, Longmire must trek into the mountain wilderness. There just isn't anyone else on the mountain who can get there in time to save the hostages. Whether or not Longmire will get there in time is up for grabs.Johnson writes the landscape and the winter as if they are characters central to the story and in most ways they are. Longmire's guides are a Native American shaman with an axe to grind against the worst of the prisoners and a paperback copy of The Inferno that makes its way through many different hands and provides a literary backdrop to what would otherwise be a fairly standard thriller.Johnson develops the suspense and the tension from the very beginning of the book with shackled prisoners who still manage to make you uncomfortable. The many chances for disaster are writ large across the first few chapters.It can be difficult to write a character who is interesting enough to carry most of a book. How many people are really that interesting, have interior lives we care about, can battle the elements and live? In Walt Longmire, Craig Johnson has written a character that is worth knowing. A modern Western Sheriff in an ever-changing world. Read these books.
    • 5/5
      First Line: "Didn't your mother ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?"If the title of this book sounds familiar, it's a partial quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest: "Hell is empty And all the devils are here." I was in complete agreement with Shakespeare when the book opens with Walt and Deputy Saizarbitoria in a restaurant making sure their prisoners eat their lunches. All three prisoners are murderers, and two of them are way off the crazy chart.Just as my nerves calmed down due to two of Absaroka County's finest doing everything by the book (and then some), the prisoners are transferred to FBI custody and put into a van with more dangerous prisoners. Walt has to go along because they're still in his jurisdiction. Even though it's May, that means nothing in the high mountains, and there's a humdinger of a snowstorm coming. The way Walt figures it, the FBI and the prisoners will be out of his territory and he'll be back home enjoying dinner with Vic before the storm hits.Yeah. Right.The prisoners escape with hostages and head higher into the mountains. While Walt still has a phone that works, he gives his dispatcher orders for his troups, and then he heads out to capture the bad guys. Alone. In a howling snowstorm. Why? In Walt's own words: " I applied the simple rule that allowed me to make stupid decisions in these types of situations: If I was down there, would I want someone coming after me? Yep."When you're a hostage and scared out of your wits, the foremost thing on your mind is COME SAVE ME! See why I'd vote for Walt Longmire?You do have to wonder if Walt's lost a few marbles, though. The weather is right from the bottom circle of Dante's Hell. He can barely see. It's more than cold enough to freeze bits of him off. The terrain is rugged and not easy to traverse on a sunny summer's day. And he keeps seeing things. If all that weren't bad enough, the craziest escapee of them all keeps playing mind games with him.Once those prisoners escape, this book grabbed me by the throat and would not let go. Walt's trademark humor is there to help lighten what would otherwise be a very grim plot. Hell Is Empty is very much his show. Everyone else is on the sidelines, fighting the storm in an attempt to break through and help. Johnson builds so much tension that it's almost impossible to put the book down.One man against the elements. One man to stand up against the bad guys. Walt Longmire is my sheriff of choice. I just wish he'd be able to chase the bad guys in good weather. In a field of flowers. Under sunny skies and a balmy breeze. He's no spring chicken anymore, and I want him to last through many more books to come!
    • 4/5
      As diverting as the rest, though I'm eft with the nagging feeling that Longmire still hasn't directly addressed his inner turmoil despite the seemingly purgative ordeal he undergoes here. Johnson also drops hints about future tribulation, but surely the sheriff can't take any more physical punishment?
    • 5/5
      Hell is Empty – Craig JohnsonWalt Longmire, long time sheriff of Absaroka County, and his deputy, Santiago Saizarbitoria (Sancho) transport three criminals to a meet-up with FBI agents and two other county sheriffs in the Big Horn Mountains. One of the prisoners, 'Reynaud Shade' is going to reveal the burial location of an Indian boy he murdered years before. It's no surprise that it falls in Walt's backyard, which would have ended the story rather abruptly if it hadn't. That and the unpredictability of the weather are the only two gimmees that you get from Craig's seventh book in the Longmire series.The boy's name it turns out was named Owen White Buffalo, a possible relative of Virgil White Buffalo, a FBI (F'ing Big Indian) that assisted Walt with the murder of a Vietnamese girl in an earlier book – Another Man's Moccasins. Having turned over the remaining prisoners for transportation back to jail, Walt and Sancho head back to Durant in the wake of an early spring snowstorm. Things begin to quickly unravel when Walt discovers a bent bobby-pin in a sandwich saved from earlier in the day, and upon turning into the storm and heading back up the mountain, the two find themselves facing the aftermath of a break-out. One agent down, two dead, prisoners escaped with hostages. Walt leaves Sancho to look after the wounded agent and sets off to track down the escapees with the best intentions of locating them and waiting for backup. “I applied the simple rule that allows me to make stupid decisions in these types of situations: if I was down there, would I want someone coming after me?” One can't fault Walt's thinking at this juncture, and even he begins second-guessing himself shortly after stepping away from the comfort of a warm vehicle. There's backup on the way and it's possible he can get a jump on the bad guys. I love that Walt's human. Like the rest of us, it gets him into trouble. From mountain lions, ambushes, bear attacks, forest-fires, bullets, and mother-nature, Walt becomes embroiled in a chase through the high mountains, rife with as much history as the people that traveled them. Carrying a copy of Dante's Inferno, Walt teams with Virgil White Buffalo as a guide on his trek.There are few scenes with the other characters we've come to love, but their individual personalities shine strongly when Walt has the opportunity to cross paths with them via phone conversations. Craig does such a fine job of keeping the reader in the story that it wasn't until I closed the book did I realize he'd never once used the line I've come to love – 'the usual'. Boy howdy. As always, Craig's descriptions of the Wyoming landscape are breathtaking, and leave images in your mind as picture perfect as any photograph. I've read this entire series multiple times, and each time it feels like coming home to a family reunion. The ultimate will be the audiobook version, out soon I hope, with George Guidall stepping once more into the shoes of Walt Longmire. And then, the pilot episode of Longmire on A&E, hopefully followed with a long running series. And then, meeting up with Craig in July. And then, the lo-o-o-ng wait for the next book...p.s.Craig, many thanks for including an appendix with the titles recommended by Sancho's peers.